machinery might be employed to give those who might wish it an opportunity of purchasing annuities by the payment of stated regular sums up to a certain age; and even to insure their lives. So strong, indeed, was this feeling, that he eventually proposed, as an addition to his bill, that under the same management there should be an Insurance-office for the poor, with properly-calculated tables and modes of payment. We need not here dwell upon the miscellaneous items which he fully went into in his admirable speech. He finally begged the patient attention of the House and the country to the consideration of the general outline of the plan which he had proposed, in order to encourage the labourer to acquire property, and to secure to them the certain and profitable possession of it when acquired. He had the greatest hope of a happy effect from its being put in practice. "If the poor," said he, "should be found to avail themselves of it to any extent, the advantage to them and the country would be incalculable, and the expense attending it would speedily be covered." This Bill went through several necessary stages; there was little objection manifested to Mr. Whitbread's plans for securing the savings of the poor, but there was also little anxiety to forward the measure. Mr. Whitbread in this, as in many others of his wise proposals, was far ahead of his time, and he suffered the matter to drop towards the end of the session.[15] One at least of the important organs of public opinion frowned upon Mr. Whitbread, and laughed at his scheme; an organ whose frown and whose laugh was no joke at that date. It has not unfrequently been a subject of remark how persistently the _Quarterly Review_ stood in the way of progress, clogging the wheels of all kinds of reform. In matters of this kind, however, it generally showed a most enlightened policy, and was not unfrequently in the van of improvement instead of obstruction. It was not so always with its more powerful rival, the _Edinburgh Review_. It commented upon Mr. Whitbread's "strange project" of uniting the savings banks throughout the kingdom in one national establishment, and his minor proposals under that head, and very warmly ridiculed all. "Neither from theory nor from experience," it concludes an article, "are we able to discover any kind or degree of good as likely to result from so vast a project; though it is easy to see that it might be productive of infinite confusion, trouble, and expense. In fact, every savings bank is perfectly competent in itself to transact the whole of its affairs, and can have no great difficulty to provide the requisite facilities or securities without either disturbing its neighbours, or withdrawing the attention of Government or the Legislature _from their proper concerns_."